Electronic Arts expanded its office to begin work on a Star Wars video game. It is speculated in a recent GameSpot article that the position might be connected to an open world Star Wars game The position is lead online engineer located in Vancouver, BC. A clear indication of what the job entails is seen in the opening sentence: “Lead a team to deliver online features for a Star Wars Open World project.”
The last time EA appeared to be making an open world Star Wars was in 2013. Such a game brings lofty expectations. Even though the game will not be released, let alone completed, for some time, the last thing that EA fans need is another reason to be angry after a difficult six months. In November, EA underwent a myriad of criticism due to the Battlefront 2 microtransaction controversy. Before that, EA shut down the studio that attempted to reboot a Star Wars open world experience, Visceral.
VP of EA Worldwide studios Patrick Soderlund released the following statement in regards to the game’s slow and tedious development.
“Our Visceral studio has been developing an action-adventure title set in the Star Wars universe. In its current form, it was shaping up to be a story-based, linear adventure game. Throughout the development process, we have been testing the game concept with players, listening to the feedback about what and how they want to play, and closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace. It has become clear that to deliver an experience that players will want to come back to and enjoy for a long time to come, we needed to pivot the design.”
While we wait for EA’s next move, we hope that the force will be strong with the next one.